Yes, it's electric. Yes, it makes all the right whirring and swooshing sci-fi sounds future cars are supposed to make. But despite all this, the all-wheel-drive Audi e-tron concept car simply won't fly. Sorry. But it does drive, like a real, honest, two-seat sports car.

Malibu, Calif.--It doesn't fly. Yes, it's electric. Yes, it makes all the right whirring and swooshing sci-fi sounds future cars are supposed to make. Yes, it looks like it comes straight out of Blade Runner. And, yes, it shape-shifts like it was guest starring on Battlestar Galactica. But despite all this, the all-wheel-drive Audi e-tron concept car simply won't fly. Sorry. But it does drive, like a real, honest, two-seat sports car. And we know that, because Audi let us drive it for a few glorious miles along Southern California's Pacific Coast Highway. Which is, you know, a real road. Here's how this concept motors.

The Specs

The basic engineering concept of the e-tron goes back at least 111 years to the young Ferdinand Porsche's first design, the 1898 System Lohner-Porsche that put electric motors (eventually) in each of the four separate wheel hubs and powered them with a single battery pack. And that's essentially how the e-tron is engineered.

Starting with an aluminum space-frame chassis pulled off the R8 sports car production line, Audi chopped 2 inches out of the wheelbase and cut down the roof just about that much too. Throw in reduced front and rear overhangs, a lot of concept car detailing like wraparound LED lights, omit any rear-window or side mirrors (replaced by video cameras), and the result is a car that looks like an R8, but has a chunkier, block-of-granite presence the R8 can't match. The orange e-tron on display at the Los Angeles Auto Show wore typically unrealistic show-car wheels and tires, but the red one driven along the Pacific Coast Highway was fitted with the 19-inch wheels and tires from the V10-powered R8. The all-independent suspension is, for the most part, R8.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Where the engine would be in an R8, the e-tron stores a battery pack instead. That's a tidy 100 lithium-ion cells stacked high, just behind the cockpit and running transversely across the chassis. Packed in behind the half-ton of batteries are cooling radiators for the larger rearward pair of electric motors (they're actually mounted just behind the rear axle line). Another cooling system is mounted forward to cool the smaller electric motors up front (mounted at the front-axle line).

To keep air flowing to those radiators, the e-tron is a polymorph--literally a shape shifter. The nose opening has a clear plastic panel that moves to let air in or block it. Flaps open and close on the side scoops. And the elegant aluminum slats on the car's back lift up individually to almost swell organically and form a sort of air grabber. It's all so wicked wonderful to look upon that the question of whether it's really necessary technology never even enters our mind until hours later. Interestingly, while the e-tron is aerodynamically super-slick, there are no aero aids aboard to increase downforce. So it'll just have to rely on its 3527 pounds of road-hugging weight to keep it planted to the pavement.

Altogether the four motors combine to produce 313-hp and, thanks to the miracle of geared multiplication, an absolutely unfathomable 3319 lb-ft of total torque. Audi says the car would be limited to a 125-mph top speed in production, and it was limited even more than that during our drive.

style="background-color:#333; color:#ccc;">

Audi e-Tron Test Drive Photo Gallery

+ CLICK PHOTOS TO ENLARGE

The Drive

With its low roof and a driver's seat that doesn't adjust, getting into the e-tron can be a challenge for us larger humans. But once your various limbs are snaked around the doorsills and the low-slung steering wheel, this Audi is perfectly comfortable. The conventional driving interface is maintained in that the steering does in fact steer the front wheels, the pedal on the right makes the car go, and the pedal on the left makes it stop. The turn signal and wiper-control stalks appear to be straight out of the R8.

Press the start button and the information screen rises in front of the driver. No sound. No indication that the car is ready to move. No nothing. But snick the shift wand into "gear," lightly touch the accelerator and the e-tron moves forward. The only sound is a slight whirr from some pump somewhere in the car and the muted crunch of the tires moving over broken pavement in the parking lot.

Following behind a California Highway Patrol Dodge Charger with Audi's principle engineer on the project, Thomas Krauter, in the passenger seat, the e-tron moved onto the Pacific Coast Highway just north of the big rock at Point Mugu. With even a slight touch of the throttle the e-tron felt muscular and, for lack of a better term, like a real sports car.

The stretch of highway south of Point Mugu is smooth, gently curved and ultimately unchallenging. But it's enough to feel the instantaneous surge of torque that is typical of an electric vehicle and even more pronounced in the e-tron. Unlike an internal-combustion engine, which produces its peak torque at a discrete point toward the top of its operating speed, electric motors produce just as much torque at 1 rpm as they do at 10,000. So there's never a feeling of the thrust falling off because, well, it doesn't. Until, of course, the computer tells the car it's time to stop having fun.

At speed the e-tron sounds downright zoomy. There's a pronounced whoosh and whirr as the motors spool up, and the tire noise becomes a white-noise growl. It turns out all sound effects editors in every Hollywood sci-fi movie were right about the noise coming from high-performance all-electric cars in the future.

According to Audi's Krauter, the four electric motors work with a central drivetrain computer to, in a sense, recreate the all-wheel-drive security and feel of the familiar Quattro system. Computer algorithms can, for instance, tell the outside wheels to move faster than the inside ones through a corner. Using all the sensors available--from steering angle to wheel slip, brake application and more--the computer can determine just how to spin the engines to achieve the fastest speed through a corner, or at least the speed that's likely to feel most comfortable and safe to a driver. Considering how virtually all the sensations of the e-tron are filtered through computers, one can imagine a day in the future where automotive software is sold as a boutique option. Want your e-tron to drive just the way Michael Schumacher would have it? Then plug in this program, or simply download it from the Web. Like it to run more for comfort than for speed? Then try this program.

A short southerly mile or so after the drive began, a CHP Crown Vic holding back northbound traffic came into view. "Let's make a U-turn," Krauter said with maybe a hint of resignation in his accented English. And so we did, chasing the CHP Charger as it whipped around and accelerated away. Less than 3 minutes after it started, our e-tron drive was over, and the car was headed back under its tent to be juiced up from a 400-watt clean-diesel generator Audi had shipped over with the car from Germany.

Bottom Line

This short drive wasn't much more than a tantalizing taste of a delectable future. We don't know if the e-tron will really cover its claimed 155-mile range. Audi says the e-tron will fully charge from a Euro-spec 230-volt household current in 6 to 8 hours; but we don't know if that's true or how desperately long it will take using America's typical 120-volt electricity supply. We can't tell you if the regenerative braking is already bug-free or will feel good after a couple of hundred hard stops. And while the e-tron felt quick, we don't know if it really zipped to 60 mph in Audi's claimed 4.7 seconds.

What we do know is that Audi is aiming to have something like the e-tron in showrooms sometime around the end of 2012 with a price tag nearing $200,000. And we know that if it comes anywhere close to delivering on the promise of our short drive it's going to be entertaining - like all good science fiction.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Popular Mechanics participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.